Definition and relevance
Soft skills are those skills over and above the technical skills and expertise in a given field. Soft skills are required for a person to relate well to and be successful in his/her job environment. While someone may have the technical expertise to conduct a duty, soft skills enhance his productivity (Tulgan). Unlike technical skills that relate to a specific field, soft skills apply to all industries and any work environment. Soft skills encompass attitude, communication, and etiquette. Attitude relates to having the right frame of mind and it helps an employee to interact with people, learn from other people and develop in his career. Without the right attitude, an employee cannot do much even with the highest technical expertise. An employee also needs to have good communication skills (Kamin). Communication skills enable a person to express attitudes, technical skills, among others in a way that is understandable to the audience. Organizations have become complex with several functional units hence coordination is critical (Kamin). Besides, the work environment involves a lot of interactions between employees, managers and other stakeholders in an organization. Therefore, communication skills essential in the modern work environment. An employee or a potential employee with poor communication skills is not able to demonstrate his/her technical expertise. Etiquette is also critical in ensuring effective communication. Another crucial soft skill is emotional intelligence which is the ability to recognise one’s as well as others’ emotions.
As a management accountant, it is important to have good communications skills to assist in the preparation of managerial and other reports. Besides, soft skills are necessary to enhance coordination that is necessary for collecting management accounting information from various departments of an organization.
I can improve my soft skills by creating self-awareness. This helps in identifying my areas of weaknesses, why I react to certain situations, among other aspects. I would then identify the soft skills to develop and concentrate more effort to such. I can also improve my soft skills by interacting with people to understand their emotions and motivations (Kamin). This will assist in reducing conflicts with other employees. I can also learn from others by accepting criticism and changing behaviours where necessary. To ensure this, having a mentor in the organization is important. Having a positive attitude will also assist in developing soft skills (Tulgan). Another important way is practice. Soft skills are taught like technical skills. They are learnt and enhanced through practice.
Application of information learned during the course
Much of the information I have obtained in this class have been valuable in my job. I work in the accounting department of a manufacturing company. Part of my duty is to prepare production cost statements. The information I got on product costing and preparing production statements has helped me in my job. I also prepare marginal cost income statements for internal managerial decisions. The information on classification of costs; direct, indirect, variable and fixed costs has been of great help in the preparation of the statements. I also do break-even analysis of products, determining the profitability of each product and giving recommendations to the management. The skills have been useful in the preparation of reports to the management of the company. I have applied this information learned in class in almost all my duties. Even at home, I have applied some managerial accounting concepts in decision making especially in analysing the financial impact of decisions.
Works cited
Kamin, M. Soft Skills Revolution. New York: Wiley, 2013. Print.
Tulgan, Bruce. Bridging The Soft Skills Gap. Wiley, 2015. Print.
